Chapter Twenty-six: Learning to Read
My father had shown me how to use my gift for writing, but my mother gave me the gift of reading. Aside from giving birth to me, it was the nicest thing she ever did for me.
My reading material of choice was 100% comic books. The brightly colored pictures and funny stories were my sanctuaries from my mother's endless drinking and the chaos surrounding my parent's divorce.
There was something soothing, simple, and calming about the well-ordered worlds found in the panels of a comic book. Illustrations captured the essence of a scene with a minimum of detail.
I spent countless hours closed up in my room looking at my comic books. If a book didn't have pictures, it wasn't worth my time.
My comic collection was the stuff of legend. I was the proud owner of nearly four hundred comics of every description from Uncle Scrooge to Classics Illustrated. It was a full spectrum collection.
It was too good to last. Fate and my mother had other plans.
My comic book cocoon unraveled the day I came home from the 8th grade and found that my entire library of comics had vanished.
My mother had thrown them all away. Every last one was gone.
"Dennis I’ve had it with you and your stupid comics. You're 14 years old. It's about time you started reading real books. If I see another damn funny book in this house I'll rip it to shreds," Joyce said.
That was it. There was no mercy and no exceptions.
I sulked. I pouted. I threw temper tantrums. I deployed and used every trick in the book. Nothing I tried worked and neither Joyce nor my stepfather would relent. The ban on comics was as fixed in stone as the commandments Moses had carried down from Mount Sinai.
It took me about a week to burn through all five stages of grief.
Denial wasn't an option. My comics were gone, and there was no point in pretending otherwise.
The next stage was anger. I was already chronically pissed at my mother so getting angrier over missing comics was like throwing a piece of kindling into a raging bonfire; Dramatic but pointless.
For a brief time, bargaining looked like an option, but that also was an illusion. Bargaining with my mother over comics was as senseless and as effective as screaming at a brick wall.
Next came depression, and I moped about. I could have successfully auditioned for the "Woe is me" poster child. Depression was, for lack of a better word, depressing. It sucked and, adding insult to injury, it was as boring as hell.
Finally, there was acceptance. Like it or not I was now living in a comic free world.
I discovered reading mostly by accident. It was a Saturday morning, and my paper route was completed. I had nothing to do and all day in which to do it. I was taking a shortcut through a vacant lot. As I squeezed between two fence posts, I spotted a ragtag paperback copy of H. G. Well's The Time Machine sticking out of a trash pile.
Something about the book's cover caught my attention. The title was intriguing, and since I was in no hurry to be any place, I sat down on a discarded tire, thumbed through the pages, and tried to figure out what the book was all about.
I was disappointed that there were no pictures to look at. The damn thing was wall-to-wall words. On a lark, I started to read, and within a few pages, I was hooked.
The book was indeed filled with pictures, but the illustrations were not on paper, they were in my head. With each turn of the page, I followed the time traveler as he moved from one world to the next. I watched his adventure in time unfolded in my mind.
Daylight was fading to yellow-orange as I finished the last page. The transition from book's fantasy world and back to the real world was disconcerting, like being jolted awake in the middle of a pleasant dream.
I was astounded that I had spent almost the entire day actually reading a book. The Time Machine was my very first cover-to-cover read of a book that a teacher had not shoved down my throat.
Standing after sitting for hours was a real pain in the ass. My muscles were stiff, my back hurt, and my rear end felt like it had a perfect indentation of the Goodyear Tire logo.
My childhood was pretty much a "free range" affair. My folks didn't care where I went or what I did as long as I was home in time for dinner and arrived without a police escort.
Living at home was residing in a war zone. Hostility and anger hung in the air like clouds of poison gas.
Dealing with my mother after she had been drinking was playing Russian roulette with all six chambers loaded.
Books became my fortress, and the lands and worlds within their pages were a sanctuary. The characters and heroes adopted me as a member of their families, and the authors were my mentors.
Reading became my source of strength and renewal in the eye of the storm. One afternoon after finishing a book where the hero was a poet, I jotted down a quick four-line verse of poetry that popped into my mind. More than fifty years later, I still use those lines as a personal mantra whenever I find myself in need of strength, calm, and clarity.
Seek not the storm's fury
Nor its jagged light.
Search instead for the quiet center
And from there stand against the night.